VisualVocabulary
by plug in baby57
Summary: Carly likes working with words, if only because she can't draw but Sam has always been more of a visual type. Cam fic for magicmumu for the nick girlslash exchange.


Carly never did finish her extra-curricular art lessons and it seemed to be affecting her school work. Her art teacher had said on her report card that "Carly's poor grade is through no lack of effort, she is simply incapable of using a pencil to any satisfactory degree." Even Sam thought that was harsh, and Sam had received report cards written in blood simply repeating the word "no" over and over. Not to mention that teacher was wrong. Carly knew from her perfectly sculpted cursive script that she could use a pencil, she just couldn't _draw_ with one. The pictures in her head refused to translate to paper.

She tried but it never worked. A person more complicated than a stick figure would never look right if she had produced it. The more realistically she tried to draw a person, the more it came out looking like some sort of horrible gelatinous blob. If she tried to draw in a cartoonish style, it looked even more like a horrible gelatinous blob. It didn't make sense, everything ended up crappier than the thing before it. It was as if she had a limited pool of drawing ability from birth that drained with each attempt at drawing something, never to be replenished. And she'd wasted most of it drawing crude pictures of Spencer at the age of five.

Unfortunately, it was effecting more than just her art grade. Somewhere along the line she'd taken to doodling in other lessons. She didn't think that was so bad, sure her grades dropped slightly but there wasn't a great difference between an A minus and a B plus. It took a lot of effort to keep getting A grades and she had a very complicated life outside of school that included being friends with an MMA champion and running a comedy webshow that got an unusual amount of mainstream exposure through an even more unusually large tween audience. Not to mention Ridgeway's insane teachers.

They were the main problem in all this, she was pretty sure that other schools weren't this bad. She must have been at the one school in the United States where a tiny doodle in a note book was grounds for detention. It's not like her books were like Sam's, where the only thing resembling what was studied in class was when she drew a triangle on the same day they learnt about Pythagoras' theorem, even that was drawn in English rather than math. Every other page in her history notebook had a picture of a lion or tiger, usually eating the teacher. Perhaps it was because Mrs Briggs and Mr Howard just generally hated children and Sam escaped detentions for doodling by getting detentions for pushing Gibby down the stairs and throwing medicine balls at the Gym teacher.

So Carly found herself with Sam in yet another detention, although "yet another" was different for the pair. For Carly it was her fourth that semester, whilst there had been some discussion about Sam being kept back another grade just to make a dent in her backlog. She collected detentions three times faster than she could serve them. Most students would have served some kind of suspension by that point but Sam claimed her mom had some kind of "special arrangement", and she did air quotes when saying it, with Principal Franklin. The both of them were thoroughly squicked by the idea until one day when Sam's mom came home from one of their "special sessions" with a trophy that proclaimed Puckett and Franklin as winners of the 2012 mixed doubles Seattle Squash tournament.

Mr Howard was, as usual, in and out of the room on a regular basis (rumour had it he was sneaking off to see Mrs Briggs). Sam and to other detention regulars took the opportunities he presented to play a card game known as "Scabby Queen". Carly hadn't picked up on the rules, nor did she want to because each round seemed to end with a punishment, and the backs of their hands were left bleeding. Carly, being the practical girl that she was, took the time to do some homework.

At least that was what she was doing in theory. Unfortunately that theory was as much a failure as a forty year old working behind the counter at McDonald's. She was doodling again and the previous simile was equally relevant. It didn't take long for Carly to realise she was sailing a failboat up the river of fail, so she abandoned ship for the dry land of the written word, where things tended to go her way. With half the page taken up by a poorly drawn dog, she made the decision to not try to carry on with her homework on that page.

She didn't really have anything to write about though. The dog had been an absent minded creation that was worse than usual, he didn't have a story attached to him or anything that could possibly make her brain vomit out more than two paragraphs. But she resolved to do something because she wanted to avoid Sam's card game, where she seemed to be scraping a deck of cards across the back of a boy's hand.

Sam appeared to be stirring, she seemed to have some sort of sixth sense for when Carly was bored and available for mischief. It caused havoc in Carly's life, even if half the time she shot down Sam's crazy ideas, she still went along for the other half. Carly reasoned that having nothing better to write about, she might as well write something about Sam. She went on to note that she didn't actually think there was anything better than Sam anyway. So she started writing.

Then she stopped and looked at the single word she'd written.

Boobs.

Carly marvelled at it. It seemed to say a lot. Like "you're an idiot", "mind like a gutter" and "Sam does have quite the rack on her." Yes, there were larger in the world but Sam wasn't a large girl in any sense of the word that related to physical size. They had a tendency to distract the hormone-laden Carly who was still technically in the closet but left the door open and waved at passers-by. Even Freddie had reached the point where he expected Carly to have an opinion if he pointed out a girl he thought was hot. For Sam there was no closet except the one she dragged people into for a quick make out session regardless of gender.

At least, it had started out as a hormonal, teenager-that-will-go-for-anything kind of thing. Although apparently still quite a prominent part of it, Carly had eventually realised that it wasn't just the chest but the person who owned it. She fell for Sam, and she fell hard, like a bowling ball down an elevator shaft. She never really felt pressure from it though. They were pretty much inseparable anyway. Most of the time Sam slept in her bed, they walked to school together, had all their lessons together and hung out together. A newspaper reviewer had once claimed iCarly was a lesbian webshow. They were, as far as she could tell, a kiss away from being a full-fledged couple anyway. And it was pretty good, so why ruin it? Yeah Sam had kissed girls before, but even for straight friends taking the next step often just caused trouble. There was, in her opinion, no point in chancing it.

Although sometimes, just for fleeting moments she thought that it'd be worth it, even if they were together for just a day, they would be glorious.

They'd met at eight years old, fighting over a sandwich. She would have told Spencer about it after school and probably forgotten all about it if not for Sam. After the incident Sam had mostly just decided that Carly was her friend and passed her a note in the class after lunch that described the teacher as a rude word. It was at that moment, she fell a little in love with Sam. It was a childish, semi-hero worship kind of love, but it grew with her to the point where Sam was the most important thing in the world to her. She had to wonder if Sam had ever realised that.

She returned to the paper and crossed out the word. She blamed it on having sex-on-the-brain. Beautiful though Sam was, it felt sort of wrong to focus on it when there was so much more to Sam. Then she went back to the word and obliterated it. It felt good to spread some destruction, even on this minuscule scale. She ignored the looks that the regulars gave her, moved the paper to one side and retrieved another sheet from her bag, making a conscious effort not to write down body parts.

After a good twenty minutes, Carly realised what she had written wasn't much more than random thoughts. It needed structure, some sort of reason for being. Her thoughts didn't need writing down as they were already in her head. A story required creative juices that just weren't flowing and everyone agreed poetry was boring, so she settled on a letter. She'd write a letter to Sam just to pass the time. She couldn't talk to her because the game was still ongoing, a delinquent girl from the year above them was currently battering Sam's knuckles into oblivion.

As she was reaching back into her bag to get some of her fancy red paper because if she was going to do this she was going all the way, Mr Howard returned and Sam begged to go to the toilet, not revealing that her hand was split open from the older girl's hitting. He finally acquiesced, only for her to disappear for the rest of the hour. By the time she returned, left hand bandaged, Carly's letter was finished, hidden in her jacket pocket and the detention crew was as one in their willing the clock to speed up the last minute and hasten their freedom. It was universally agreed to be the worst part of detention, the minute that last a thousand years. Except it went fairly quickly that day, as Sam spent most of it arguing with Mr Howard over how long she was in the toilet. It was always enjoyable to watch Mr Howard frothing with rage, especially when it was someone else he was frothing at. Sam could hold her own so there wasn't anything to worry about, except the extra detentions she was earning.

--

"Really Carls, I can't help you." Sam said. After going home (that is after going to Carly's home, which was technically Sam's home in terms of where she spent the majority of her time), Carly had bitten the bullet and asked Sam for art lessons. She had not been forthcoming, after suffering a strange and sudden bout of modesty, a trait that Sam knew very little of.

"Why not? You're great at drawing things." Carly was close to dropping to her knees and begging. This was not the response she had expected. Something like "Yes, I am that great, let me pass on my glorious wisdom to a lowly peasant," was more up Sam's street.

"But they're just little silly things and I really don't know how I do them. It just sort of comes naturally." Sam said.

"What?" Carly was astounded. This couldn't have been the same Sam that she'd been friends with for all these years. Not to mention how wrong that was, even their art teacher thought Sam's drawings were good, she just despaired that Sam couldn't stay on task when she even made it to class. "Your drawings are brilliant. Sure they might be jokey but so is Girly Cow and that still gets reruns despite ending in 2002."

"You can't fool me, they're crap and I know it." Sam said, despondent. Carly realised that Sam might just actually believe she wasn't very good. It was scary for two reasons. First, it meant Sam actually cared enough not to be either flippant or egotistical about it and second, when Sam believed something it was very difficult to change her mind. Ridiculously so, even. Carly knew that drawing was something Sam should feel good about, because she was actually very good at it. Changing Sam's mind about her ability would be a long term project so she focused on the issue at hand.

"Well then, can you teach me so I'm only as crap as you?" She asked.

"I honestly can't. Look, the only advice I can give is to take your time and have an eraser handy. Just keep working on it until it's good." Sam replied.

--

Carly liked to make Sam at least pretend to do homework. What usually happened during these homework sessions was that Carly did her homework and Sam sat down with a closed textbook and chatted somewhat inanely for the duration, with the occasional snack interjecting. It was business as usual.

It had been half an hour since she started and Carly was beginning to get exasperated. It was a common occurrence when trying to study whilst Sam was around. Sam was feasting upon those crunchiest of corn based snacks, Doritos. Given that her mom wasn't one for teaching manners, Sam had never learned not to speak with her mouth fall. Carly was trying to do algebra whilst Sam's mouth was a volcano of crumbs, eliciting a cacophony of crunching. It was clear that she was riffing on something exciting but Carly couldn't make out a word. She looked up from her cosine calculations.

"Sam, you need to swallow, I can't understand you." She said. Sam continued munching. And continued. Carly was mere seconds away from snatching the bowl away from Sam when she finally swallowed.

"I said," she began, "I got a note." Carly raised an eyebrow.

"You?" She was incredulous. "You took notes? In class?"

"No, nimrod." Sam replied. "I got a note. As in, someone left me a note, in my bag." Carly connected the dots. If Sam had left her bag open and dumped under the coat hooks then it might just be possible that... No way, that was very unlikely. But to be sure...

"What sort of note?" Carly asked, subtly shifting papers to cover the red pad on the far corner.

"Some sappy love note." Sam said succinctly. "It's all like 'you're beautiful' and stuff. Not my thing really."

"So," Carly began her inquisitive line. "Any idea of who it's from?"

"No name," Sam shrugged. "But whoever it was does that fancy Italian writing thing you sometimes do." She was uncomfortably close to the truth, Carly really did think she'd have at least put that together but Sam had happily stumbled around in the dark. And got the word Italic wrong.

"It's Italic, Sam," Carly corrected. "And that's used for emphasis. My handwriting is cursive."

"What? Like damn, hell and fu-"

"That's enough." Carly quickly interrupted. "What are you going to do about this note?"

"Well, nothing." Sam shrugged again. Carly was more surprised than she should have been. Apathy was Sam's default setting. "Some boy wants me he can come get me." She said.

"Really, you're just going to sit on it? Not try to find out who wrote it?" Carly questioned. She supposed that now the cat was out of the bag, it'd be quite nice if Sam had some sort of reaction to it. She turned back to the math homework, realising that letting Sam see her facial expressions was perhaps not the way to keep this a secret.

"How am I supposed to find out who wrote it?" Sam asked. Carly heard a creaking of springs as Sam vacated her bed. "I mean it's not like they forgot to disguise their handwriting or used fancy red paper that I'd seen them buy last week, is it?" She said, creeping up behind Carly and putting a hand on her shoulder. Carly froze stiff.

Carly tried to decide upon a word that summed up the situation. The ones that came to mind weren't very lady-like so she gave up and focused on the mountain of panic that had just dropped on her head.

"If you're gonna be my secret admirer cupcake, you'll have to try harder." Sam teased.

"I," Carly stuttered. "I wasn't going to give it to you. It must have fallen out of my pocket by accident." She looked up and backwards at Sam, who loomed over her like a great looming thing. Sam smiled. Or rather, smirked a mischievous smirk. It was a smirk that signalled that Sam had a plan. Carly didn't anticipate the plan being upside down lip contact and was a little taken aback. Then she got into it, Sam got into it and things started to move towards the bed. They didn't get there though, as they were both too busy kissing to look where they were going and ended in a painful pile on the floor.

Carly rubbed the back of her head where it had just met the hardwood floor in an explosion of pain. Sam had apparently landed on top of her and was injury free having had Carly to cushion the fall. She smirked again and said nothing. Words were Carly's domain, Sam worked on the visual and she liked the visual she had with Carly laying beneath her. Carly however, felt some words were necessary.

"How's that for a first kiss?"

**--A/N--**

**This was written for magicmumu at the Nick_girlslash fic exchange. It's a little (ok, a lot) shorter than my original idea for the prompt but the original idea probably would've worked out to be longer than anything I've previously written and really, this hasn't been a great time re: my writing. But I do hope you enjoy.  
**


End file.
